The dim-lit restaurant hummed with intimate conversation, but Eric and Klara ate their meal in silence. He had chosen the beef because it was his favourite on the menu, but for the first time, the taste was disappointing. It lacked any taste at all. He always took it well-done, and that evening was no different, and after asking the server, it turned out no change had been made to the seasoning. Klara had taken the hake. She sliced and picked shards from the fillet with precise, eager movements as she always did. Neither of them liked to overtly show distaste in public.  

Eric finished the last bite of his steak and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window beside them. The view was modest, but it was one of Eric’s favourites. Beyond the glass, he could look down three storeys to the street, where people walked the Old Quarter cobbles, and moseyed at the windows of tailors and bookshops. A few electronic shops had taken the place of more traditional ware sellers, but for the most part, the old-quarter had remained untouched by the advances of Tassuri technologies. Street side oil lamps had been replaced by electrical lamps, which in turn had been replaced by solar-powered lamps, and those had been replaced quite recently by Crë-powered lamps. All variations however, were housed in the original rectangular steel frames. The cobbles were damp after the day’s rains and it sent glimmers of light across the streets which Eric always loved. Above the low-rise cluster of patchwork streets, loomed the town wall. Vik was one of few Tassurian cities which still boasted its original boundary walls. Where many cities had sprawled upwards and outward, Oswald Blake, Eric’s grandfather, had suggested the town-turning-city would be better served by building upwards and downwards. The other members of the town's council had agreed. Unanimously. Vik therefore boasted a low-rise Old Quarter, a perilously-high-rise Central District and multi-level Shore District. The city continued underground for up to twenty storeys of deep multi-level basements and complex tunnels. Subter. The undercity sprawled out beyond the foundations of the original town walls. 

His father had taken him to this restaurant the day he’d passed his university entrance examinations, and they had returned numerous times as Eric’s academic and later professional career had flourished. Oswald Jr. hadn’t been a doting or present father during his childhood, but once Eric had shown merit in the sciences, the Blake patriarch had begun to show interest. The restaurant had become a place of comfort, of feeling seen, for Eric, so he had brought Klara on the evening of their engagement and many evenings thereafter. The food always managed to bridge whatever disquiet Klara and Eric may have been facing. However, on that night, it seemed nothing would break through their ice.

‘It’s disrespectful, Eric,’ Klara said once dinner had cleared and they waited for dessert. 

‘I’ve been working with the substance for a decade. What’s different now?’

‘Crë is central to my beliefs. I’ve spoken about this so many times and you always ignored me, but this is taking it too far.’

‘You never complained of the benefits.’

Klara shot him a glare. It was the most severe expression he’d seen anyone possess. Not even Oswald Jr. had mastered such an effect in his decades of solemnity and grouch. Eric refrained from smiling, though he knew his wife could read the amusement from him nonetheless. She wasn’t Dhaherite, but she knew him. 

‘It will help all of us, Klara. Look how I’ve helped light the streets.’ He waved to the glister below. 

‘You’ll destroy everything.’ Her blue eyes severed him with disgust and, a rarity; panic. ‘Everything.’

‘If Crë was destructive, I would have blown the lab by now. The prisons would have combusted. Our street lights would have shattered.’

Klara began to shake her head before he had finished speaking. ‘It doesn’t work like that. Chaos doesn’t work in logic and patterns. You know your science, Eric, and I know mine.’

Eric tried not to laugh. What science might that be? Potions and hand signs? He wanted to probe, but refrained. Klara wouldn’t take kindly to ridicule.

 Their dessert was served, which saved Eric from digging a hole for himself. The cheesecake was a speciality at the restaurant, and they ordered it every time. They began to eat in unison. Everything about the pair of them was balanced, aside from when it came to their demi-disaster. 

‘She has such potential.’ 

‘I know she does. You should let it manifest organically. She’s only five, what do you expect from her?’

‘Do you know how rare it is to find a true copycat? She could become the strongest Dhaherite in the world.’

Klara stopped eating. She watched him for a few long moments, searching and reading his face. He held her gaze. 

‘If she’s the strongest in our world, will you finally love her?’

Klara and Ellie were the image of one another. He could tell that, twenty years from now, Ellie would look the image of her mother. Blonde hair and sallow skin of Lernich northerners, and blue eyes that could pierce fire. Their other children were a healthy dose of Alturican pale skin and dark hair. Ben and Lily looked more like him and he liked it better that way. Their facial features too, took on his deep-set eyes and strong jaw. Honest faces. Klara and Ellie were slender and doe-eyed, perfect features for hiding brutal capabilities.

Eric sighed. ‘I don’t hate her.’

‘I never said you did, but you don’t like her.’  

He thought about that for a moment. He wasn’t sure if he liked the person Ellie was or not, he certainly didn’t understand her, nor did he feel an overwhelming sense of pride when he looked at her, but she was young. It could change. ‘I’m just disappointed.’

‘By standards you set before she was born.’

‘It’s the way I was raised, Klara.’

‘Then do better.’

He wanted to question whether she knew her loyalty to religion was because of sectarian standards her parents had set for her, but he only shrugged. ‘This is my way of doing better.’

Klara ate a few mouthfuls of cake while gazing out the window. It didn’t appear as though she was looking at anything in particular, but now and again she would smile, shake her head or nod softly. Sometimes people thought this quirk of hers to be insanity, but Eric knew better. Klara was creating conversations in her mind, seeing the best and worst outcomes, finding a way to seek compromise. He waited because it was all he could do while Klara switched into her unique world of logic. 

‘It’s going to snow tonight,’ she said.

The clouded sky did appear quite bloated. ‘It might.’

She finally looked at him. ‘You want to experiment on our daughter.’

Eric nodded.

‘With a substance that has already killed several test subjects?’

Eric nodded. ‘All of them. Fifty-four,’ he said. ‘Fifteen Nons we tested first, and then thirty-nine Dhaherite.’

‘That’s a lot of bodies.’

‘She’s different. I’ve watched her interact with it in my lab. It…reacts to her…communicates with her genes, even through my barriers.’

‘You’ve never mentioned this before.’

‘I wanted to be sure it wasn’t an anomaly or coincidence. I needed it to happen several times and under various circumstances and...every time…I think her openness to other dhaheri will make the bridge.’

‘You think. But you could be wrong and could kill our daughter.’

‘When I think something with this much certainty, I am always right.’ 

Klara did a thorough, silent read of him again. 

‘Okay Eric. Do it. But you won’t tell her of my part in this decision. She needs to have someone she feels hasn’t betrayed her.’

‘Thank you, Love.’